


i'm a loose bolt (of a complete machine)

by paperclipbitch



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Gen, Robot Big Bang Challenge, faux victoriana setting, i literally do not know what this fic is i cannot tell i am so sorry, lots and lots of clockwork, really what even is this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Steampunk AU.</i> Even taking out the fact that he’s a robot, life with Tony is never dull.  Pepper can say that much for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm a loose bolt (of a complete machine)

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, first-off, written for Robot Big Bang! And title is from _Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes_ by Fall Out Boy because I couldn't think of any better titles and I wasn't calling it _Tick Tock Tony_. Much love to Isi for the beta! Gosh, this is not at all what I meant to write when I decided to write a vaguely Victoriana steampunk!robot!Tony AU; I think I meant to write some kind of thing where he and Steve (platonically) solve crimes or something, like Sherlock Holmes with ticking. ANYWAY THIS ISN’T THAT FIC, so, sorry. I’m not sure what to say in this notes section, really; like, I have no idea what this story is and for the first time in a long time what I worried most about this fic was whether or not it was _boring_. So, um, I like this, but I’m not sure who/what my audience are???? ANYWAY, look, I wrote a fic where Tony Stark is a clockwork robot.
> 
> There is beautiful artwork created for this story [here](http://calembours.livejournal.com/367034.html) \- go shower it with love!

They say that, towards the end, Lord Howard Stark became incredibly... strange.

In lower voices, mouths hidden by their fluttering gossipy fingers, they say that Lord Anthony Stark is heading the same way.

_Oh_ , if only they knew.

**One.  
Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts.**

Thursday morning breaks – literally – with what sounds like the chandelier in the third-floor dining room crashing to the marble floor. It’s a nice chandelier; imported from Venice a few generations back, capable of holding fifty candles the width of a woman’s wrist, and worth an uncomfortable amount of money.

Pepper sighs and takes another sip of her tea. She quite liked that chandelier.

The newspaper is awash with Tony’s name again; his blindingly white smile glitters up from the page, the details of a party last night, everyone drinking to excess and dancing all night and Pepper isn’t sure what time he came home. Usually, after a night like that, Tony will sleep until the late afternoon. Apparently not today, though. Pepper rolls her eyes and turns another page, replacing Tony’s grinning photograph with the news of the latest airship crash, relegated to the later pages because the only thing hurt by the accident is The Honourable Justin Hammer’s pride. At least _that_ will put Tony in a good mood.

When she can’t possibly put it off any longer, Pepper closes the newspaper, drains the last of her tea, and goes upstairs to find out what exactly Tony is doing and if it needs stopping. She learned in her first week at Stark Mansion that it’s best to leave a few minutes before going towards the scene of Tony’s latest mess; by that point the worst of the flames, swearing and general carnage will have died down and she can establish whether she needs to send any more apologetic floral arrangements to the neighbours. They have a standing account with the florist; Pepper believes that it’s better to be safe than sorry, especially where Tony Stark is concerned.

As she nears the dining room, Pepper can hear the sound of hammering underneath the noisy crackling of Tony’s gramophone playing an angry approximation of a waltz. She grits her teeth, tucks a loose lock of hair behind her ear, and walks inside.

“That chandelier was an heirloom,” she reminds Tony, who is sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by teardrop-shaped crystals, shattered glass, and three French presses of coffee. 

He waves a careless hand. “We have three more.”

Pepper’s learned that when it comes to Tony, you should pick your battles. So she doesn’t point out that that was a piece of _art_ that he’s ripping to pieces, or that he shouldn’t drink coffee because it tends to speed up all his mechanisms and cause malfunctions later; instead, she settles on: “You haven’t changed since last night.”

Tony looks down at his shirt; once white, now ripped and smudged with grease. He’s abandoned his vest and undone enough buttons for Pepper to see the golden panel on his chest, ticking and whirring away to itself. 

“Huh,” he says quietly, twisting his mouth. “Right.”

“That shirt is ruined,” Pepper points out, maybe a little softer than she means to. This isn’t to say that she can’t get angry with Tony when she needs to, but it’s early in the morning and Tony doesn’t learn and a damaged shirt is really a mild thing compared to most of what he gets up to.

“Go away, Pep,” Tony tells her on an eyeroll, fond and ridiculous all at once.

She thinks about it, but she really _doesn’t_ want to know what Tony is doing, at least not until it leads to something that she’s going to have to come up with a cover story for, and in any case she hasn’t finished the newspaper.

“Call for me if you’re on fire,” Pepper tells him, and hears his laughter behind her as she leaves.

-

Colonel James Rhodes is Tony’s best friend and one of the more eligible bachelors in the city. Once, a long time ago, this might have made Pepper nervous or flirtatious or a little self-conscious, but life with Lord Anthony Stark has changed many things about her, and now she just greets him with a warm smile, accepting his easy kiss to her cheek. He looks so tired, drained, but she doesn’t ask about the war and he doesn’t tell. Instead, they drink coffee in the second-best parlour, the one Tony has never set foot in and possibly doesn’t even know _exists_ , and talk about the thing that links them together.

“How is he?” Rhodes – never Rhodey, no matter how many times he tries – asks, wry smile flickering over his mouth.

Pepper shrugs lightly. “Well, he hasn’t tried to dismantle himself recently, although this morning he is doing something horrific to an antique chandelier.”

“The Venetian one?” Rhodes asks, and laughs a little when Pepper’s surprise must show on her face. “Hey, I listen sometimes.”

Rhodes has known Tony a long time, knows the answers to all the questions Pepper can never ask. There’s levels to the secret that they keep, and there are parts of it that Pepper will never see, never know, never guess at. She’s reconciled herself with that, of course, but sometimes she looks at Rhodes and just _wonders_.

A ticking in the hall alerts them both to the arrival of one of Tony’s robots; machines made of clockwork that he’s experimenting with having in place of servants, layered with something almost like sentience. Rhodes turns interestedly towards the door. 

“Are they still blowing up?” he asks.

“Less often,” Pepper replies. “We still keep buckets of sand in all the rooms, just in case.”

The robot trundles in on its little wheels, balancing another tray of coffee with bowls of cream and sugar. Nothing has spilled, and it is clicking happily to itself, stopping just before the table.

“Thank you,” Pepper says to it, taking the tray and smiling. She doesn’t know whether Tony’s robots can see or hear social niceties, but every time she sees one it just reminds her that one day they could be more, be just like the laughing, half-crazed man who stalks the mansion and makes ridiculous demands of Pepper’s time.

Tony is unique, but he may not always be. 

“Good job not blowing up,” Rhodes says to the robot, who responds by backing clicking out of the room, successfully not tripping over the rug or banging into the doorframe as the prototypes often did.

“Impressive,” he remarks when they’re alone again. 

“You only say that because you haven’t spent the last three months ducking flaming cogs,” Pepper tells him, but she laughs as she says it. Perhaps she should have been drafting her formal letter of resignation but, well, it’s too late to turn back now.

-

The fingers of Tony’s left hand have been sticking all morning; the joints are stiff, and they make disconcerting cracking noises when he manually straightens them, a frown etched between his eyebrows.

“Cancel my eleven o’clock meeting,” he tells Pepper.

“Were you ever planning on attending?” she asks, raising an eyebrow at his pyjamas, an oil-stained robe thrown carelessly over them. 

“I’m the head of Stark Industries,” he says, tossing his head, “of _course_ I was.”

Pepper decides against getting into this argument, and instead goes up to the attic where they keep their telegraph machine, dispatching a swift coded message to Stark Tower. It will hardly throw things into a state of emergency; she doubts anyone was actually _expecting_ Tony’s presence. She waits for confirmation that her message has arrived before going back downstairs, deciding to put off reading Tony’s mail for him for now in favour of going to make sure that he’s alright.

Though not a regular occurrence, glitches in Tony’s machinery happen often enough for it not to be a reason for panic. More often than not, Tony causes them himself; gumming up the cogs with coffee or standing too close to a giant magnet for too long and locking his knee up. Tony is hardly what can be called responsible, after all; the fact that he is almost _more_ vulnerable in this form than he would be if he were flesh and blood doesn’t seem to have occurred to him, or if it has then it didn’t cause much impact. Tony lets everyone else worry and gossip and murmur about him, and just gets on with what he wants to do. 

“Screwdriver,” Tony says absently when she walks in.

Pepper looks around the mess that Tony will never let her tidy, and notes the row of screwdrivers laid out in size order on a nearby bench.

“Which one?” she asks, skimming her fingertips over them.

“Blue handle,” Tony responds, sounding distracted.

She selects the right one and crosses the room toward him, carefully weaving around a battered-looking grandfather clock, mechanism spilling out of the face, two deactivated robots and a table piled high with books, most of which have scorched covers or pages escaping.

Tony is sitting by the window, left arm in his lap. He’s peeled the skin back from the palm of his hand, rolled up around his knuckles like a glove, and for a split-second Pepper’s stomach lurches even though she’s seen him in far worse states. He holds out his other hand for the screwdriver, and she gives it to him, hovering a little anxiously as Tony catches his lower lip between his teeth and starts twisting one of the cogs near his wrist. His mechanisms are more complicated than any others in the world; he showed Pepper the plans, once, on rolls of paper as tall as he is, every cog and wheel and wire and keyhole mapped out and visible. She turned away quickly; it was worse than seeing a skeleton, worse than seeing a book of anatomy. Tony stripped bare is terrifying; not because of the reminder that he isn’t nearly as human as he appears, but because it’s a reminder of just how vulnerable he really is. Superficial wounds heal, headaches can be cured with medicine or sleep, but Tony has none of those options. He is made up of little pieces of metal, pieces that can snap or rust or slip or stick, and the only person alive who knows how to fix him is... him.

It scares her. Of _course_ it scares her.

Tony prods something and it makes his fingers spasm, twitching constantly until he twists the screwdriver with his other hand and they go still.

Once, Tony made her put her hand into his chest and twist until she got his heart restarted. His ticking, metal heart, which she could have sworn was slightly warm under her fingertips, but perhaps that was just her imagination. He’s improved the plate since then, made sure that the key can’t break off and prevent him from winding himself back up, but Pepper still thinks about it sometimes, the way his smile turned into a grimace and his eyes caught hers, eyes that look like ordinary eyes but aren’t.

“Anything I can help with?” she asks, watching as Tony attempts to move his hand and only succeeds in twitching his thumb and little finger.

Tony hums vaguely to himself, still prodding around in the palm of his hand; Pepper spares a thought to hope that he actually _knows_ what he’s doing.

“I might need you to do everything that requires a left hand for me,” he remarks after a moment, looking up long enough to tip her a filthy wink.

“You don’t pay me nearly enough for that,” Pepper responds mildly.

Tony laughs, bending his fingers with ugly cracking sounds from the joints. “Perhaps I’ll give you a raise,” he tells her, and hums a tune she doesn’t recognise as he carefully manipulates his thumb with two fingers from his right hand.

Pepper leaves him to it, making a mental note to get rid of all the coffee in the mansion.

-

“I’m almost certain that you’re physically incapable of getting drunk,” Pepper tells Tony, hands on hips, when he tumbles out of his carriage and into the entrance hall. 

“You don’t _know_ that,” Tony tells her, the words blurring a little, and she can’t work out if it’s feigned or psychological or genuine. There has been another ball tonight; one where Tony has no doubt been drinking and dancing and making a general spectacle of himself all night, while Pepper sits at home like the metaphorical Cinderella. She doesn’t mind actually; she wants no place in the world of the upper echelons of society, where everyone has a sharp agenda and _opinions_ on her clothes. She much prefers to follow in Tony’s wake, where everyone murmurs that at least his _assistant_ (or _housekeeper_ , depending on just how rude they want to be) is halfway sane.

Tony gets away with being eccentric because he is rich. And maybe also because there is something charming about his smile, the sparkle in his eyes, and his complete lack of compunction when it comes to saying outrageous things. Maybe, although Pepper will never admit to it.

“I don’t,” Pepper agrees, watching him lurch his way towards the stairs. “But since you lack a digestive system I don’t think you can actually be affected by alcohol.”

“So _judgemental_ ,” Tony moans, stumbling over his own feet. “Don’t frown, Pepper, you’re so much prettier when you don’t frown.”

“How would you know?” Pepper can’t help but ask. “I think all I ever do is frown at you.”

“I’ve got a good imagination,” Tony tells her, collapsing against the stairs, sitting on the bottom one. Pepper comes to sit beside him; it’s late, but she predicted that this would happen and so hasn’t changed for bed yet, hasn’t even unpinned her hair.

“I know,” she replies.

He leans into her, smelling of champagne and someone else’s perfume, and she imagines she can feel him breathe against her neck, except that, of course, he doesn’t.

“Get off, Tony,” she says quietly.

Tony sighs and pushes himself upright, hands slipping against carpet. “Do you always say ‘no’ because I run on clockwork?” he asks, unexpectedly serious. “Because, you know, I function as well as any man.” He laughs, white teeth flashing, and adds: “Better, in fact.”

“Good to know,” Pepper says faintly, reaching out to straighten his crooked bowtie with nimble fingers. “And no, it’s because you employ me, in case you’d forgotten.”

Tony arches an eyebrow. “You’ve never been one to run from a scandal, Pep.”

“Actually, I have,” she corrects him. “But you always dash headlong into them and somebody has to follow you to mop up the blood.”

“I actually don’t bleed that much,” Tony tells her, screwing up his face. “Or at all.”

“Who said I was talking about yours?” Pepper asks, and he laughs, pressing his face into her shoulder momentarily before he remembers and rights himself again.

“Go to bed, Tony,” she says softly, and sits still on the bottom step long after he’s gone.

It isn’t the first time, in any case.

\- 

Pepper never knew Tony _before_ , back when he was human, full of blood and bones and breath. She’s not even sure how old he was when he had his accident, or precisely what that accident involved. There’s only the chalk line of what she once thought Tony was, and when she found out what he actually is. 

He grows synthetic skin in jars in the basement. It’s distinctly eerie and Pepper avoids going down there when she can help it; oh, there would be worse alternatives, and she has read _Frankenstein_ after all, but she still hates to see the white sheets of not-quite-flesh that Tony will one day painstakingly graft onto his metal skeleton. Perhaps he should have taught someone else how to work with his increasingly complicated mechanisms, but Tony is Tony, so he never will. He mostly built himself, and that is a thought that sticks in Pepper’s mind, churning around on sleepless nights.

Saturday morning finds Tony looking haunted in the kitchen – regardless of the fact he doesn’t eat – and scribbling intently in a notebook.

“We have a house guest,” Pepper observes evenly.

“We do,” Tony agrees. He waves vague, dismissive fingers. “You couldn’t help her get herself dressed, could you?”

Tony Stark can build machines with wires so delicate that they could pass through the eye of a needle, but he cannot help a woman lace up her corset. That says a lot about him, really.

“Please build a robot that can do this,” Pepper tells him, swiping the coffee pot from beside him and tipping the contents down the sink. She can pretend it’s for his own good, since he really should _not_ drink coffee, but they both know that it’s really just her being petty.

“Where would be the fun in that?” he asks with a wicked smirk, and Pepper swallows a smile since she probably humours him enough as it is.

Tony’s latest conquest – Pepper has tried to think of better, and more flattering, names for the women he brings home, but none have presented themselves – is actually a reporter for the newspaper; Christine Everhart, if Pepper’s notes on society are up to date. She’s pretty: golden-haired, dignified even in her state of undress, and shifting through her notes when Pepper enters Tony’s bedroom. 

Sometimes, she wants to ask if these women ever _notice_ anything amiss about Tony. The panel on his chest – the only really visible reminder of what he is – is explained away with something complicated, a story that changes every time Tony tells it, though he always comes out the hero. His skin feels real, his hair possibly _is_ real – Pepper’s never asked; some things she doesn’t think she can stand to know – and, well, she isn’t really sure about the rest of it. But he doesn’t breathe, doesn’t sweat, and you’d think that that would be obvious. Perhaps he fakes it.

No one’s ever gone running to the papers or the police, though, so Tony must be doing something right.

“Good morning,” Pepper says evenly, reflecting that perhaps she should have brought Christine Everhart some tea while simultaneously deciding that she’s glad that she hasn’t.

Christine flicks her eyes up to look at her. Pepper knows the things they say about her – _all_ of them – but she doesn’t flush, doesn’t let her expression slip.

“Apparently you need help dressing?” she adds, calm, steady.

Christine arches an eyebrow. “So _you’re_ Miss Potts,” she says, the words rolling sleekly off her tongue, and Pepper doesn’t like her tone. 

“I am,” she replies, and doesn’t blink.

They regard each other for a long moment, and then Christine shuffles her papers back into her reticule and stands up, petticoats churning around her legs. Pepper decides immediately that she will lace her corset just a _little_ too tight.

“Is she gone?” Tony asks later, poking his head into the room Pepper commandeered as her own in her second month at Stark Mansion; the need for personal space, as well as somewhere to store things where they won’t be broken or melted down to make something new, is vital here.

“If I’d wanted to become a ladies’ maid I would have searched for those positions first,” Pepper says crisply, keeping her attention on today’s newspaper. More about The Honourable Justin Hammer, which makes her skin crawl a little, but he can’t do anything as magnificently as Tony can and will be constantly in shadow as a result.

“I’m sure you didn’t want to be a nursemaid either,” Tony shrugs, inviting himself in, “but you seem to have become one anyway.”

It’s a rare moment of vocal self-awareness, though Pepper also knows that he doesn’t really _mean_ it.

“It was a governess I was really avoiding,” she replies easily, turning the page. “And you’ve always made it very clear I can’t teach you anything.”

Tony bats his too-long lashes at her when she glances up, and she spares a moment wondering where he got them from, if he grows them somewhere in the basement too, in corners she’s never ventured into.

“Is this you being angry?” Tony asks, head tipping to one side. 

Once something went wrong with Tony’s vocal mechanisms, twisting everything he said into metallic grating until he finally couldn’t form any sounds at all and was forced to communicate mostly through chalkboards and glaring until he’d figured out how to get it all back into working order again. On occasion Pepper thinks back on that month of silence with more nostalgia than she really should.

“Not especially,” she replies. “I assume Miss Everhart’s article will be particularly flattering now.”

“Of course,” Tony replies, with a ridiculous wiggle of his eyebrows. 

“Well,” Pepper says, “I’ll have her offices send over a copy of the article early, just in case we have to get the lawyers involved. Again.”

Even taking out the fact that he’s a robot, life with Tony is never dull. She can say that much for it.

“You love getting the lawyers involved,” Tony responds, poking through a pile of letters Pepper has been replying to in a decent approximation of Tony’s handwriting; God knows he’ll never do it.

“I think you’re getting me confused with you again,” Pepper replies, smacking his hands away from her filing without even thinking about it.

“I don’t know why you’re mad, it’s a sign of how highly I regard you,” Tony suggests, a childish pout skittering across his mouth.

“It’s a sign of how utterly ridiculous you are,” Pepper corrects, but she’s swallowing down a smile anyway.

**– finis.**

Lord Anthony Stark is a genius, of course, and most houses that can afford it own at least _one_ of his inventions. He is changing the way people live their lives, though it’s sometimes hard to believe that when he’s staggering across the floor of yet another party, flute of champagne in the hand not supporting a pretty woman fresh in society.

People have begun to frown, though, to question his lack of wife and children; it’s possible that whatever made his father, makes him, like _that_ is catching, of course, but there’s still a legacy to consider, and the more discreet of asylums should the child lean more towards madness than genius.

In truth, he makes people uncomfortable with the way he skims the world they are so deeply rooted in. There’s something about him that is unnerving, something it’s almost impossible to put your finger on.

**Two.  
Colonel James Rupert ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes.**

For the first half of Tony’s life, he tried frantically to make his father proud of him. For the second half, he’s living proof – or whatever it is that he does now that looks enough like living to fool anyone who doesn’t look too closely – that no one is going to beat Howard Stark, who designed a clockwork robot so perfect that it could emulate life down to the tiniest possible detail.

Rhodey was there the day that Tony died, so he’d know, after all.

Nowadays, Tony is much more relaxed about his father’s legacy, or at least he pretends to be and laughs at Rhodey whenever he tries to bring it up, so now he’s left to draw his own conclusions based on late nights and the thinning of Pepper’s mouth.

Worrying about Tony Stark is nothing new – for as long as he can remember, Rhodey’s been worrying about him on scale that slides from _vague_ all the way up to _cannot sleep for thinking about horrible possibilities_ – although the way he worries about Tony has changed since he started running on clockwork. Sometimes he thinks that it’s better, and sometimes he thinks that it’s worse, and sometimes he reads the telegrams he makes Pepper send him – on the strict understanding that Tony is _never ever to know_ – over and over again, looking for hidden meanings, for cracks. Tony is a complicated mixture of arrogance and loneliness and determination and self-awareness held together with sheer bloody-mindedness, a cocktail Rhodey should probably have run from when he was young enough not to look back, but he never did, and now they all have to live with that.

There are times when Rhodey feels more like a governess than a best friend, and this is why he’s taken a job with the army where he can travel, make himself actually _useful_ , rather than a desk job closer to home where he’d inevitably spend too much time at Stark Mansion trying to stop Tony from setting himself, his home, his experiments or his assistant on fire. It’s difficult, knowing when to step in or when to leave Tony to pick up his own pieces – often literally, considering how many pieces he can break into these days – and Rhodey isn’t sure he’s got confidence in his ability to be objective.

It’s not that there aren’t benefits to being Tony Stark’s best friend as well as his oldest one, because Rhodey’s never been one to cling onto thankless causes, and he’s getting used to the look in people’s eyes when they find out (“ _that_ Lord Stark? But isn’t he rather…” “Eccentric? Yes.” It’s easier to cut people off with _eccentric_ than hear the words they choose to describe Tony, because a lot of them are kind of inappropriate for public conversations). He lives with the restless nights and the crazed letters Tony sends him that he can never properly decipher and the slightly helpless expression Pepper wears when he visits at a bad time, because it’s worth it, no matter how much he occasionally wishes it wasn’t.

Of course there’s a difference between Tony as he was and Tony as he is now, clockwork panel in his chest and veins full of acid and lead instead of blood, but there’s no point in mourning for something that’s already happened, or in cursing what is, essentially, a miracle. A scientific one that Tony can be a real pain in the ass about, of course; but a miracle nonetheless.

-

Rhodey is greeted at the doorway to Stark mansion by a waist-height robot, loosely human in shape, which holds out what might be an expectant arm. He considers it a moment, then shrugs out of his coat and lays it carefully over the robot’s appendage. 

“I really like that coat,” he warns the robot. “I want it back in one piece.”

He has no idea if Tony’s robots are sentient, though if they are, Tony will definitely have designed them to respond to idle threats rather than straightforward commands.

“Any idea where your master is?” he asks the robot, but it’s already disappearing down the hall on little wheels, clicking and ticking away to itself. It’s entirely possible that it is singing while it works, and Rhodey decides to find that sweet instead of sinister, because he suspects this is just the tip of the clockwork iceberg.

“Pepper?” he calls. “Miss Potts?”

It was much easier to call in on Tony when he still had things like butlers, valets and actual servants, like everyone else does, but over the years Tony has started to surround himself with machines. Rhodey and Pepper are the only exceptions, the only people left. He’ll probably try to force them out one day, but he’ll have to make adequate mechanical substitutes first, and none of his creations so far have managed the disapproving glares that Pepper delivers daily. The things Tony needs aren’t the things ordinary men need – he doesn’t need nutrition or sleep in any sort of conventional way – but he can’t be left to his own devices and survive.

Tony’s workshop is in the east wing of the mansion, designed like a firework factory after one too many explosions that nearly brought the whole building down. Light roof, thick walls, and protected by half a dozen different locks that Rhodey begins to navigate his way through, twisting tumblers into place, numbers into orders, and avoiding touching the levers that he knows are covered with poison and worse. Tony’s security systems read like cheap fiction a lot of the time, and Rhodey knows that the only reason he doesn’t have an actual _moat_ of sharks protecting his workshop is that Pepper refuses to feed them.

Rhodey steps to one side automatically as the workshop door swings open – he lost his eyebrows once, years ago, and he is _never ever_ going through that again – and then tentatively sticks his head around the frame. The room looks empty, although he’s been misled by Tony before.

Pepper isn’t allowed to tidy in here and apparently the robots don’t clear up either, because there are screws and cogs and bolts and bits of glass all over the floor and collapsing machines all over the room. The remains of the Venetian chandelier that used to hang in one of the dining rooms are piled in a glittering corner, and sheets of paper are tumbling out of journals with burned spines.

He picks up a piece at random, frowning down at the horrendous scratchy mess that Tony thinks is handwriting – which is ridiculous because Tony went to a very expensive school where they spent literal _years_ teaching him meticulous copperplate – and trying to decipher it. He gives up in the end; they say Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards and was a genius as a result. God only knows what this means about Tony, except that he possibly has a little _too_ much genius.

“He’s not here.”

Pepper is standing in the doorway, perfectly dressed as always, not a hair out of place. Rhodey finds himself automatically scrutinising her, looking for the subtle warning signs in her face that mean things are falling apart at Stark Mansion, and is relieved that she doesn’t look any more tired than usual and her smile is actually genuine.

“You sure he’s not just living in a cupboard in here?” Rhodey asks.

“ _Pretty_ sure,” Pepper replies, a tilt to her mouth that’s half amusement and half realisation that that is entirely possible. “He’s been on the roof since dawn.”

Rhodey considers this, putting the paper down carefully on top of the pile of damaged journals, where it immediately slides off and ends up on the floor again.

“Do I want to ask why?”

“No,” Pepper responds simply, following him out of the workshop. “I’ll send up some coffee. And maybe some alcohol.”

“A lot of alcohol,” Rhodey agrees, and heads for the stairs.

-

“This is weird,” Rhodey remarks.

“We’ve done weirder,” Tony replies, taking a swig of vodka and passing the bottle over. Rhodey accepts it, takes a sip, and grimaces. 

“This is the crap the army drinks,” he points out, “you can _definitely_ afford better.”

“This stuff really keeps the cogs rust-free,” Tony replies, smirking, and smacking a hand against his chest. “It’s medicinal.”

“It’s basically paint stripper,” Rhodey points out.

“It really isn’t,” Tony assures him, and when Rhodey raises an eyebrow he adds: “please, you _know_ I drank everything during my invincible years.”

“You think those stopped?” Rhodey asks, smiling a little to soften the question. Tony lived like he’d never die until he died, and when it turned out death wasn’t the end and he could live on in an entirely different body he carried on living like nothing would ever stop ticking. He claims to be better now, although Rhodey isn’t entirely sure that he is. 

“Your scepticism is charming,” Tony tells him, sarcasm ringing in his voice, and hands Rhodey the key. “Crank me up, kid.”

He hops up onto the worktable and lies down flat, shirt unbuttoned to reveal the golden panel on his chest. 

“I know you can do this yourself,” Rhodey tells him.

“The angle’s weird, seizes my wrist joints up,” Tony replies dismissively, waving a vague hand. 

Rhodey tells himself his hands are completely steady as he releases the catches on either side of the panel and lifts off the covering to reveal the layers of clockwork that make up Tony’s heart these days. He slides the long, slender key into place, watching Tony taking a deep breath that he doesn’t need, eyes closing, and listens as the whirring sounds in Tony’s chest stop, the key locking everything into place.

“Good?” he asks, looking away from the mechanisms he barely understands to Tony’s face; expression calm but something tight in the line of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Yeah, great, never been better.”

Rhodey takes another swig of vodka from the bottle because he can stay composed in the middle of a battle with a gun in his hands and enemy fire all around, but keeping Tony Stark’s heart ticking is something else entirely. In some ways, he can barely recall what life was life before, but right now it’s a sharp reminder of what exactly changed.

“It’s pretty hard to fuck this up, Rhodey,” Tony says quietly, cracking open one eye. “I’m sure even you can manage it.”

“Ha ha,” he responds, flat, and _twists_.

Tony’s whole body jerks, but he lets out another pointless breath and doesn’t say anything, so Rhodey turns the key again, and again, and again. Tony’s fingers are flexing and he can’t tell if it’s intentional or if it’s just a side-effect of winding him up, but Tony doesn’t ask him to stop so he keeps going until something _thunks_.

“There,” Tony says, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

His voice sounds thin and strained, a little more metallic than usual, and Rhodey pulls the key out of Tony’s chest as fast as he can. He reaches for the cover, but his fingers are fumbling and Tony’s hands come up to help him, stiff fingers just as clumsy until their joint effort manages to click it back into place. The regular ticking sounds that are what passes for a heartbeat start up again, amplified by the panel, and Tony pushes himself upright again.

“Jesus,” Rhodey murmurs, sitting on the table beside him because his knees are strangely weak. He’s never been squeamish about any of this, even helped Tony do a skin patch job on one of his legs last year, but there’s something different about this. Something different about the thin line between life and _not_ with Tony.

“You soldier types are meant to have nerves of steel,” Tony remarks, snagging the vodka bottle.

“Yeah, well, next time you can hold my life in your hands and we’ll see how well _you_ do,” Rhodey snips, relieving him of the alcohol. “I’m taking this, you can’t even get drunk.”

“There is _no proof_ of that,” Tony protests. “I don’t know where you and Pep are getting all your information on robots from.”

“We’re basing all of this on the fact you’re a showy goddamn liar,” Rhodey tells him, bumping a companionable shoulder against Tony’s. 

Tony’s turning the key over and over in his hands; he has dozens of them all over the building, in bank vaults and in Stark Tower, back-ups and back-ups of back-ups and extras and spares so that no matter what happens he can never just… wind down. Rhodey doesn’t understand the plans well enough to know what would happen if Tony ran out of power, if he can be wound back up again like nothing went wrong or if once he stops he _stops_ ; it’s a question he should probably ask sometime, but definitely not tonight.

“I’ve been called worse things,” he says at last, and pulls the vodka out of Rhodey’s slightly unsteady hand. “And hey, you’ll make less of a fuss next time, right?”

Rhodey doesn’t want there to be a next time, isn’t sure that he can do this ever again. He knows he will, though, because Tony is Tony and, somehow, this still isn’t worse than Tony’s blood under his hands, breath faltering and failing.

He’ll never tell him that, though. Of course he’ll never tell him.

Instead, Rhodey settles for a simple: “You’re an _ass_.”

-

Pepper’s latest telegram on the state of Tony reads only: **Scandal. Involving aunts.**

Rhodey’s pretty sure the last scandal involved aunts too, either because aunts really like involving themselves in the supposed defilement of their nieces, or because Tony really attracts a certain _type_. It’s also possible that Tony is doing this deliberately, because Tony gets a kick out of all kinds of things and should really not be allowed to roam society doing whatever he likes and then claiming eccentric aristocracy to get away with it.

All in all, Rhodey decides not to go home and try to fix it.

A long time ago, when the world first shifted around him and nothing he knew seemed to make any sense, he thought that maybe Tony would change after he stopped being human, would grow up a little. After all, even if the shock didn’t change him, the fact that he didn’t want anyone to _know_ that he was a clockwork man now would surely make him a little less extroverted. Rhodey knows that he was naïve back then, because Tony just tossed out the idea he’d had to implant a mechanical device into his chest to help with a heart dysfunction, let the world admire his genius, and then carried on sweeping a messy wave through society.

If he _wanted_ to, Rhodey could have his pick of the society ladies. It’s something Pepper often reminds him of over coffee in one of the many disused drawing rooms of the Stark Mansion, eyes glittering; Rhodey is ridiculously eligible, associations with Tony Stark aside. Sometimes, Rhodey gets the impression that Pepper would like to mastermind him courting someone and then organise the wedding; she’ll never get to do this for Tony, and Rhodey is sadly still too polite to ask about whether she has prospects for herself. He’ll have to find out sometime: it’s really unfair to expect Pepper to only live vicariously through Tony’s aunt-related scandals, but it’s also entirely probable that neither of them have noticed.

In the end, he sends Pepper back a telegram: **let me know if anyone dies**.

It’s mostly a joke, because the worst thing that can really happen is Tony has to go back to being a genius recluse for a couple of months until all of this has blown over, but Rhodey never wants to rule out the possibility of utter chaos when it comes to Tony. He’s underestimated him before, after all.

The problem with Tony isn’t actually his wealth, his frequently haphazard upbringing or even the fact that he’s been running on clockwork for the last decade. It’s not his arrogance or his refusal to conform or his promiscuous attention span that leaps from project to project and person to person at a rate that is at best rude and at worst actually _dangerous_. After all, with the exception perhaps of a heart that needs winding up on a semi-regular basis, these aren’t traits that a dozen other society men don’t have too, drifting by on smiles and fortunes that may not be as perfect as Tony’s, but which are more than enough to get by.

No, Tony’s real problem, the one that has and will always be his downfall, is his intelligence. He uses it as a weapon, of course, though he’s never tried to make Rhodey feel inadequate – that’s a gift he saves only for those he hates, those who think that they’re cleverer than him, and those who interrupt him at five o’clock in the morning to tell him that he’s keeping the entire neighbourhood awake and next door’s rosebushes are alight – but there’s more to it than just intellectual snobbery. There’s a loneliness, an isolation, and even before Tony’s eyes became glass and a complicated arrangement of lenses and wires that are intricate enough to require a magnifying glass when doing repairs, Rhodey always got the feeling that Tony saw the world in a different way to everyone else.

And, well, it would be flippant but not lying to say that the worst element of Tony’s staggering, overwhelming intelligence lies in the fact it makes Tony’s all-too-frequent boredom a thing to fear. Because, as Rhodey has seen only too often, when Tony gets bored it puts him in the mood to take the world apart, and the worst part of _that_ is that he has no doubt at all that Tony could do it.

-

“We should get you _married_ , Rhodey,” Tony announces.

“Why are you drunk, it’s three in the afternoon,” Rhodey replies, “and I just got here so it’s kind of early for matchmaking.”

“You’d hate it if he got married,” Pepper adds, relieving Rhodey of his coat and handing it off to a nearby robot, while she ushers them all discreetly but firmly in the direction of one of the parlours. Rhodey can’t help noticing that one of the doors to his left has collapsed inwards, wood splintering everywhere, and that what he can see of the room through the wreckage looks blackened like there was some kind of fire. There are three of Tony’s robots trundling around inside; one of them appears to be making notes of some kind.

“You taught them to write?” he asks, because that is a level of progress he wasn’t aware of.

“That’s Jarvis,” Tony explains, manic and proud, “he’s definitely the smartest. The others keep breaking pens or forgetting the alphabet, but he’s got better handwriting than me.”

“That isn’t hard,” Pepper observes in an undertone; she’s still neatly dressed and bright-eyed, but her hair is escaping its pins and her collar is a little lopsided and those are her tells. Rhodey glances sideways at her but she shakes her head slightly and keeps her gaze on Tony’s back.

“I’m thinking of setting up a voice synthesiser for Jarvis,” Tony continues, either _actually_ oblivious or deliberately faking it. “I’m not sure how yet, but I’ve been looking at the plans for mine and I might need to dismantle my throat in front of a mirror but I’m _pretty_ sure I can put it back together again afterwards.”

Rhodey considers listing all the ways that this is a terrible, terrible idea that is probably going to end in permanent malfunctioning, but he doesn’t think Tony would listen to him right now and anyway Pepper probably has all the reasons written down in an actual list in order of priority.

“And if you can’t, well, the mansion could always use a little more quiet,” Pepper says, the cheer in her voice sharp, glittering.

“Pep, you _wound_ me,” Tony tosses over his shoulder as he walks into one of the parlours, throwing himself onto an expensive and uncomfortable-looking chaise-longue and grinning at Rhodey with all of his teeth. They’ve been perfectly formed from enamel and are based on Tony’s original teeth, but there seem to be too many of them this afternoon, something shark-like in his smile.

Pepper sits down too, picking up a pile of papers from the table and starting to flick through them with that dedicated efficiency that she uses as a shield. Rhodey considers the situation for a moment and then says: “Why do you want to get me married?” It seems like the most innocuous of all possible questions he could ask, after all.

Tony fixes him with a look and says: “You are _prime marriage material_ , Colonel Rhodes. You could get married and be respectable and have someone to send you socks when you’re off armying.”

Rhodey turns to Pepper, who shrugs and says: “I think he’s been re-reading _Little Women_.”

“I want grandchildren, Rhodey,” Tony adds earnestly.

“I… is something malfunctioning?” It’s possibly rude to ask this, but sometimes Tony needs frank questions asking and anyway there isn’t a set protocol for how to ask your clockwork friend if there’s a glitch somewhere inside.

Pepper’s knuckles are white, her head ducked just enough that Rhodey can’t see her expression.

“Probably,” Tony admits after a while. He holds up a hand; it isn’t shaking, like a person’s would, but there are spasmodic twitches of his fingers accompanied by a soft clicking Rhodey’s only just noticed. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t start matchmaking, can you _imagine_?”

“You’d hate it because I’d have less time for you,” Rhodey points out, as one of Tony’s other robots comes in carefully carrying a tray of tea. “And then who will you hang out with at five in the morning?” 

“Pepper,” Tony shrugs, pushing himself upright and reaching for tea with one of his twitching hands; Pepper intervenes and manages to pick up the pot before Tony can touch it. 

“I’m going to be asleep at that time,” Pepper says firmly. “You can play hangman with Jarvis.”

“He always wins,” Tony sighs melodramatically, but at least he doesn’t try and fight Pepper for the teapot.

**– finis**

The question that tends to crop up most in conversations about Lord Anthony Stark is, of course, the predictable one. People might wonder about his genius or his reclusiveness or just what it is in him that means many gentleman his age have settled down but he never has, but it is easy enough to leave these things to conjecture, to fireside discussions over brandy.

No, the question most often used around Lord Stark’s name is: _would you let your daughter marry him?_ And the answer is, unfailingly, _no_.

Well: would _you_?

**Three.  
Natasha ‘Natalia’ Romanoff.**

Commander Fury carries Natasha’s life in his hands, and so when he tells her that the Lord Stark situation may be getting increasingly out of hand and he would like her to go and observe at closer quarters, her only option is to say ‘yes’.

(In fact, what she _actually_ says is _will I have to wear a petticoat_ , which somehow manages to make Fury laugh, but the agreement is obvious.)

“Are you going to have to marry him?” Agent Barton asks her while she is packing; Barton is supposed to be observing what appears to be an actual Norse God who tumbled out of the sky a week ago, but Barton’s sense of timing often seems to be set to an internal clock that doesn’t match anyone else’s. In any case, he’ll be where he needs to be _when_ he needs to be there; Natasha learned that first hand, and has owed him a blood debt ever since.

“Your lack of imagination is terrible, Barton,” she tells him, and ignores the smear of his smile. 

He tugs one of her curls. “I hear he likes redheads,” Barton remarks, and gets out of range before Natasha can hit him.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is a strange little secret organisation that Natasha frequently cannot remember being inducted into, one that deals with the pieces of the world that should be kept secret for, well, _everyone’s_ sanity. Natasha was previously observing a scientist who inadvertently perfected a serum that turns him into a literal monster in times of great stress, which was something new even for _her_ , and they have dozens of other people like this on file: scientists, people born with genetic quirks and others with miraculous abilities that must absolutely never be made public knowledge.

Lord Anthony Stark has been on file for as long as Natasha has been part of the agency, although classed as generally harmless. From the vague details she’s been given – she suspects her journey will entail a _lot_ of reading – he’s a literal clockwork man, entirely metal and glass rather than flesh and blood. Natasha is not easily unnerved, given that her life to date has involved a number of things that make the most lurid of adventure novels look dull, but the idea of someone who she possibly couldn’t kill in an instant is… not reassuring, to say the least.

Natasha learned quickly not to always trust what Commander Fury says his motives are, because they rarely resemble anything similar to his actual motives, but her task, for the moment, is observation, and that she is good at. If Fury wants Stark’s technology, to – god help them – recruit him, or even have him killed… well, then Natasha will cross that bridge when she comes to it. For now, she just needs to find a way into Stark Mansion, whose security is imaginative and very possibly highly illegal, and which has a grand total of two inhabitants, both of whom are intelligent and suspicious. This isn’t to say that Natasha won’t be able to do it; just that it will take a little more effort than usual. 

In fact, she’s rather looking forward to it.

-

The woman who opens the door is Miss Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts, Lord Stark’s… well, everything, if the files are to be believed. She is immaculately dressed, not a hair out of place, but her eyes speak volumes of exhaustion.

“May I help you?” she asks; polite but definitely not friendly.

The Natasha who has arrived in New York does not look very much like the one who left S.H.I.E.L.D’s headquarters three days ago; she spent a very dull evening in a hotel dyeing her hair brunette in a basin, and another few hours being refitted in the latest fashions of the city. She’s made some adjustments to the dresses, of course, but hidden ones, and is even putting up with a pair of utterly ridiculous shoes that she knows Barton would laugh at, if he could see them.

“I’m Natalie Rush,” she says calmly, smiling at Miss Potts from underneath the brim of an artfully tilted hat, “the agency sent me.”

She steps past Miss Potts with assurance, though her progress further inside the mansion is hindered by a waist-high robot that is standing just behind the door and clicking to itself in a slightly sinister fashion. They have rudimentary clockwork machines at S.H.I.E.L.D of course, but nothing like this one, which is holding out a little arm as though waiting to take her coat, while the other arm…

“Is that a gun?” Natasha asks interestedly, squatting down to examine it. 

“It’s a precaution,” Miss Potts replies, entirely steady but a little weary around the edges, as though many things about Stark Mansion have added _precautions_. From the somewhat outdated plans that were included in Natasha’s reading material, she knows that that is true.

“Do you not get a lot of visitors?” she asks, feigning wide-eyed innocence while she runs fingertips along where the gun is welded to the robot’s arm, finding where one mechanism changes into another. A little crude, but certainly more than anyone else has ever managed with their own domestic robots.

“No,” Miss Potts replies, crisp, matter of fact, dismissive.

Natasha pushes herself to her feet and shrugs out of her coat; while the robot doesn’t lower its weapon, it does raise its free arm to take it.

“You don’t have an appointment,” Miss Potts reminds her, but she still doesn’t seem at all panicked by Natasha’s actions or presence in her home. Natasha likes her already; S.H.I.E.L.D’s information on her was sparse at best, a simple background file – she isn’t important, after all – and she’s finding her refreshingly lacking in hysterics. Natasha doesn’t have a lot of time for hysterics, though she supposes that enough time living with Lord Stark would burn away the ability to be bothered by minor disturbances.

“I don’t need one,” Natasha replies, “I’m from the agency.”

It’s an old trick, and Barton would probably tease her for being unimaginative, but Natasha likes using ruses she’s comfortable with. 

“And what agency would this be?” Miss Potts asks, raising an eyebrow, though there’s an amused flicker to her lips.

Natasha smiles and says: “ _The_ agency. You _are_ aware that all robotic devices in homes need to be examined, recorded and monitored by government agents, aren’t you?”

It’s not actually a lie, but with the general lack of progress in robotics after the initial boom when clockwork was first invented, it’s a law that has been allowed to lie forgotten.

Miss Potts should play poker; her expression doesn’t flicker in the slightest. “Of course I am,” she says.

“Then you’re also aware that you have at _least_ one unregistered robot in this house?” Natasha continues, stroking fingers over what she thinks is the head of the little domestic robot. It clicks in response, though she has no idea if that’s good or bad or imminently explosive.

Miss Potts levels her with a frankly somewhat terrifying analytical expression; Natasha looks back without blinking, idly musing that she’d better get some shoes with higher heels if she’s going to be spending any long period of time around the surprisingly tall Miss Potts.

“And how long do you intend to stay, Miss Rush?” Miss Potts asks smoothly, her smile still too sharp at the edges.

“That depends on how many robots you have,” Natasha responds, mirroring Miss Potts’ smile.

There’s a crash from somewhere upstairs that splinters the moment, though neither of them jump at the noise; Natasha from practice, Miss Potts presumably from habit.

“Well, we’d better find you a room, then,” Miss Potts tells her, and heads towards the stairs, the robot clicking after her.

Natasha swallows down a triumphant smile and follows.

-

Lord Anthony Stark is sitting cross-legged on the floor of what is apparently his workshop, dark hair sticking up at odd angles from where he’s apparently been running his hands through it. He’s in his undershirt while tinkering with something on the floor in front of him that Natasha can’t see, and for a moment she simply stands and _admires_. She can see muscles shifting under his skin with an astonishing smoothness, none of the jerks of traditional clockwork. He isn’t breathing, of course, because he doesn’t yet know that he’s being observed, and he’s humming to himself in what sounds like an actual voice rather than the tinny, crackling synthesised sounds that the few speaking robots Natasha has encountered made.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been standing there when she finally pulls herself together and raps her knuckles against the doorframe. Lord Stark jumps a little, twisting around to look at her.

“Miss Rush,” he says, drawing the sound out, lips drawing back to reveal sparkling white teeth and a smile that is surprisingly charming for all that Natasha _knows_ there’s metal beneath the skin drawing it back to cause those dimples. “From the _agency_. An expensive European education, fluent in five different languages, and a short but prolific career as a model for several prominent photographers.”

Of course he checked up on her; Natasha would expect nothing less. Nothing he’s said is exactly _wrong_ , though it’s not entirely true either. S.H.I.E.L.D have ensured that her cover is almost uncrackable, though, even to someone as clever and indefatigable as Anthony Stark.

“Well done,” she says smoothly, pushing herself upright from where she’s been lounging in the doorway and walking into the room.

“Impressive work on the security systems, by the way,” Stark says lightly, turning his attention back to whatever it is he’s working on. “Most people at least lose a finger breaking in here.”

Natasha’s actually never found a security system as illogical and dangerous as Stark’s – _downright crazed_ might be the phrase that she uses in her report – but she’s methodical and experienced and she wasn’t going be defeated by something as ridiculous as Stark’s workshop door.

“You left it unlocked,” she replies, shrugging.

He twists around so she can see him arching an eyebrow at her, but all he says is: “Okay then.”

His every moment is graceful, silent, seamless. Natasha knows that he has been faking life for at least a dozen years – which was when S.H.I.E.L.D learned that he wasn’t actually as flesh and blood as he was implying – but there’s a difference between thinking that he could fool ordinary people and almost being fooled herself. Natasha isn’t particularly technically minded, but even so she wants to get close enough to poke, to look at the mechanisms that make Stark look so… _real_.

Natasha takes a few more steps into the workshop, glass crunching under her boots. There were no documents on Stark’s workspace, and she doesn’t know what she was expecting, but she’s not sure that it was this. There’s madness and genius scattered across all the tables, across the walls and floor, and that, more than Stark’s metal heart, unnerves her.

“Are you building another robot?” she asks, keeping the question light, almost inane.

Stark scoffs. “I don’t _only_ build robots, you know,” he remarks.

Natasha does know; her handgun of choice was modified by Stark Industries only last year.

“I’m not here to catalogue what else you’re making,” she lies, pulling the nearest sheet of paper towards her with her fingertips; it’s covered in black dust that she _thinks_ is gunpowder. Hopes is gunpowder. She frowns a little, and makes a mental note that Stark’s handwriting is going to take _work_.

“You’re missing the best parts,” Stark tells her, tone a little teasing, a little flirtatious. She’s not sure that he’s even consciously aware of doing it; Stark flirts like he breathes. Or would, if he actually breathed, and that thought catches her up short. Natasha has seen a lot of strange things over the years, both before she joined S.H.I.E.L.D and after, but she’s still accustomed to working with and around people who are, for better or worse, alive. Stark is something else, something she isn’t sure how to classify, and she thought it wouldn’t bother her but apparently it does, just a little.

“You could show them to me anyway,” she offers idly, flirtatious in return because she knows how to get results, always has.

Stark pushes himself to his feet; he’s shorter than she expected, and smudged with what looks like oil, and through his undershirt she can see the golden panel on his chest that serves a purpose that S.H.I.E.L.D want her to ascertain because they know that it isn’t the reason he’s given the public.

“Oh,” he says quietly, “after what you’ve just done to my security systems, I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”

He winks at her and then steps around her, announcing loudly: “Pepper usually makes sure there’s tea in my study around this time, come on.”

Stark doesn’t look back at her, but Natasha doesn’t push it, leaving the paper on the table where she found it, stepping around scattered cogs as she follows him out.

-

Having spent the majority of her life as an assassin or a spy – or, on a few occasions, an assassin _and_ a spy – Natasha spends altogether too much time at parties. It hasn’t made her like them any more, though, and she sips a glass of too-sweet punch that she doesn’t want to drink and watches girls giggling behind fans. She’s lost sight of Stark, but Pepper Potts is still visible, talking to someone Natasha doesn’t recognise and mostly succeeding at not looking self-conscious in her gown.

She and Pepper have reached some kind of understanding without ever needing to discuss it, probably because Pepper seems to be very used to compromises. She’s got a dry sense of humour, is virtually unflappable, and mothers Stark in an annoyed fashion that’s rather sweet to watch; Natasha’s surprised herself by liking her, enjoying the interviews she’s pretending are for the robot agency files and not for S.H.I.E.L.D.

“Well, you look pretty.”

Natasha doesn’t even bother turning her head. “Of course I do.”

Barton laughs and she smiles at him, dressed in a suit that he doesn’t look entirely comfortable in.

“Aren’t you supposed to still be watching the Possible Norse God?” she asks quietly, passing him her unwanted punch.

“He’s in custody,” Barton shrugs. “I’ve been sent here.”

He hasn’t, and Natasha can see that immediately. “You weren’t on the invitations list for this party.”

Barton rolls his eyes. “I was trying to save you having to lie on your mission report.”

Natasha has, to date, lied on one hundred and thirty-four separate mission reports for Barton, but it’s sweet that he thinks he’s helping. Sweet and utterly ridiculous, of course.

“Did you think I needed back-up for a society party?” she asks in an undertone, while Barton finishes the punch for her.

“I’ve seen what you do to men who get a little over-friendly,” Barton reminds her, “I think I’d better fill your dance card for the night.”

“I don’t have a dance card,” Natasha replies, and Barton winks at her.

“Well, true, not anymore.”

It’s a long night, even with Barton making snide comments about the various dignitaries present and forcing her to dance with him every now and then. Natasha keeps an eye on Stark, who seems to be perfectly at ease here, jacket buttoned to hide the clockwork panel on his chest.

“Can he even get drunk?” Barton remarks, eyes on Stark.

“Well, he’s the only one who can tell us,” Natasha points out. “And being truthful doesn’t seem to be very high on his list of priorities.”

Stark is laughing, all bright eyes and glittering teeth, and for a moment Natasha sees what everyone else does, and it’s obvious why no one has noticed that Stark isn’t quite human, isn’t quite alive. No one’s looking for it, because there’s far too much to see already. Hiding in plain sight, or maybe he doesn’t even think of it as that. It’s hard to tell _what_ he thinks, which is going to make the psychiatric evaluation Commander Fury will later ask Natasha to write somewhat problematic.

Barton has a warm, confident hand at her waist; he’s one of the only people Natasha actually trusts to touch her, which is something she could examine closer but doesn’t wish to. She lets him twirl her around the dance floor, and he’s certainly doing an admirable job of hiding the fact that she’s actually leading. Barton’s still watching Stark, though, something thoughtful in his ever-present smirk.

“Does Stark tick if you get close enough?” he supplies at last.

Natasha rolls her eyes, resisting the urge to press down on his instep with the heel of her shoe and then claim it on too much punch.

“Not that I’ve noticed,” she says instead. “Do you want to go over and test that theory?”

“Maybe not,” Barton decides, in a tone of voice that implies that he’s going to expect Natasha try this out for him at some point. She decides to save that refusal for another day, though; it’s been a better evening than she expected, there’s no sense in ending it with unnecessary conflict.

She looks away from Stark for a moment to find that Pepper is watching him too, hair and clothing still immaculate even though it’s growing late, expression unreadable.

-

“Are you here to dismantle me?” Lord Stark asks.

Pepper drops her teacup.

_Fuck_ , Natasha thinks, though she keeps her expression neutral. “Your heart device?” she asks, tipping her head to one side. “I understand that it’s keeping you alive, why would I want to take it apart?”

Stark rolls his eyes. “You’re good,” he says. “Not good enough, of course, but still, you had me going for a while.”

Pepper looks between the two of them, eyes wide, cheeks still flushed pale. “What’s happening?” she asks, voice tight but with controlled calm. Natasha is often fairly impressed with what living with Lord Stark has taught Pepper, has made second nature. 

“I’m hoping not-actually-Natalie-Rush will be able to tell us,” Stark shrugs, picking his own teacup off the table and taking a sip, casual as if they’re simply discussing the weather.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Natasha tries. She’s not so much trying to talk herself out of this situation – although she could if she wanted to, and will explain this in her report later – as she is trying to ascertain what Stark thinks is happening so that she can lie accordingly. 

One of Stark’s robots comes in, carrying a fresh pot of tea. The tension remains crackling in the room, but the little machine doesn’t notice, and Natasha finds herself watching it instead of Stark. Even his domestic creations are more expertly made than the machines S.H.I.E.L.D tries to use on a regular basis; Natasha can’t actually decide if they should be trying to appropriate Stark’s technology or whatever it is Fury is actually attempting to do. It’s entirely possible that they will all find themselves blown up within a month, though she’ll keep that opinion to herself because she knows that no one is interested in it.

“Nice try,” Stark shrugs, reaching for the teapot, “really, I actually thought about buying it for a while, but you know that I’m a far more sophisticated version of Dummy here.”

“ _Slightly_ more sophisticated,” Natasha replies, and Stark laughs, pouring another cup of tea and pushing it towards Pepper.

“Drink up, Pep, we should at least find out if I’m due imminent death.”

“Oh, you’ll be in for imminent death when we’ve dealt with this,” Pepper says, voice a little shivery. “You promised you’d _tell_ me next time you ended up in a situation like this.”

“I thought about telling you,” Stark tries, but she doesn’t relent. “Anyway, not-actually-Natalie-Rush, _are_ you here to dismantle me?”

“Well,” Natasha says, “no. That’s apparently bad manners.” When Stark smiles but doesn’t say anything else, she adds: “I’m here to observe you.”

This doesn’t seem to reassure Pepper, who’s still looking angry, but Stark just looks interested.

“So you can create copies of me?”

“I haven’t been told what the information’s for,” Natasha says, because there are some times when it just isn’t worth lying. 

“You didn’t ask?” Pepper demands.

“I’m not in a position to ask,” Natasha shrugs. She looks to Stark. “What gave me away?”

“We’re both too curious,” Stark replies, something smug in his expression, something too sheepish. “And that law about robot registration hasn’t been used in a long time.”

Natasha narrows her eyes. “You knew that all along.”

Stark shrugs. “I wanted to know what you wanted,” he says simply. “It seemed easier to let you play it out.”

Pepper throws her hands up. “You have got to stop endangering us just because you’re bored.”

“I’m not sure that we _are_ endangered,” Stark protests. “Not-actually-Natalie-Rush hasn’t done anything yet except poke around in my workshop and send some coded messages I’m sure I’ll crack any day now. Frankly, if you wanted to know anything you could just have _asked_.”

He reaches for a teaspoon on the table, digging the edge of the handle into his wrist, and before Natasha can blink or even ask what he’s doing he’s ripping back the edge of the skin of his arm. Natasha is no stranger to violence or to even the most gruesome of mutilation, but Stark’s casual tearing of his skin is something else entirely and her throat constricts involuntarily. There’s no blood, of course, and what’s revealed isn’t muscles and veins; instead, Natasha finds herself staring at Tony’s metal skeleton, tubes and cogs and bolts welded over it and keeping him moving, functioning.

She blinks twice, and then finds that she still has nothing to say.

“It’s going to take you hours to fix that,” Pepper points out mildly, in the voice of a woman who has seen far, far worse and decided to no longer let any of it bother her.

“That’s okay,” Stark replies levelly, meeting Natasha’s gaze and refusing to blink. “I get the feeling not-actually-Natalie-Rush’s story is a long one.”

Natasha considers the logistics of this investigation, and then remembers that everyone’s got a secret in this mansion, and she’s bargaining with more than usually has.

“It is,” she agrees at last.

**– finis**

It seems, of course, that what Lord Stark desires most – more than money, more than respect, more than a beautiful woman on his arm – is to be _talked about_. He’s bright and glittering, with his wicked smile and rumours of a dangerous past that should have rendered him dead only he was too clever to allow it to get the better of him. He’s dangerous, and nothing he’s done has ever faded into the background, ever gone without comment from his peers or from the newspapers.

He’s a man with secrets, though; he makes no secret of that fact, wears it with the same casual panache he wears his expensive suits. What those secrets actually _are_ , though, remain closely-guarded, eternally shrouded in darkness.

Lord Anthony Stark wants attention, but he knows where to draw the line. There are some things it’s better not to know, after all.

**Epilogue.  
Lord Anthony ‘Tony’ Stark.**

Natasha leaves on a wet Wednesday, leaving a Pepper who pretends she isn’t moping at the sudden lack of company and a stack of increasingly annoyed telegrams from Rhodey, who is away doing whatever it is Rhodey does when he isn’t here. 

They are all annoyingly overprotective, for people Tony could potentially outlast.

That’s one of those questions he doesn’t consider, of course, because he’s already died and what he will do one day is simply cease to function. He’s aged himself over the years, putting careful thought into it as he stitches skin in the mirror to add the finest of lines to the corners of his eyes, the beginning of something he will never experience.

Some days, maudlin days, he thinks he keeps Pepper and Rhodey around only to remind him of what he should be, of what humanity is. He’s a monster of his father’s creation, and at night when he sleeps – he _can_ still sleep, though it gets a little harder each time he does – the ticking is sometimes so deafening it frightens him. But those are bad days, and not every day is bad. Some of them are even good, when he actually looks at them.

Within a week of Natasha’s departure Pepper has somehow managed to inform Rhodey of the fact Tony put his existence at risk by allowing someone he _knew_ was a spy to reside with them, to break into his workshop and examine him at close quarters, and didn’t bother to inform anybody of any of this, and Rhodey has sent home a number of frankly overexcited telegrams and a vehement intention to return home soon and yell at him.

Tony likes it when Rhodey yells. It means that he doesn’t hate him yet.

He spends the time working on Jarvis, who is going to speak if it takes Tony the next decade to achieve it; he’s already cleverer than all his other creations, and he took to chess like a duck to water, so speech cannot be much worse. Pepper just huffs out a sigh when she comes in to find Tony figuring out the logistics of slitting his own throat so he can see his vocal chords, which he takes to mean that he’s forgiven, for the moment.

The letter comes about ten days after Natasha left; it comes with the afternoon post, and the envelope is plain, with no stamp or address on it.

Pepper sits on the edge of one of his workbenches while Tony opens it, since there are currently no functioning chairs in his workshop, and she says nothing but she watches him with narrowed eyes.

The letterhead is printed with the insignia that belongs to S.H.I.E.L.D; Tony recognises it from the paperwork he uncovered while he was figuring out Natasha’s actual identity. It’s signed from Commander Nicholas Fury, who turned up in the majority of details Natasha actually decided to divulge.

“Well,” Tony muses aloud, “this will either be the best thing that’s ever happened to me or will get me killed.”

Pepper sighs in a _not again_ way, but aloud all she says is: “It’s amazing how regularly you use that sentence.” She tips her head. “Have they offered you a job?”

“A consulting position,” Tony confirms.

“Are you going to take it?” Pepper asks.

“They apparently have gods and monsters,” Tony shrugs, “why wouldn’t I go?”

It’s reluctant, but after a moment, Pepper smiles.

 

&end


End file.
